


Sleep

by Flywoman



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Dark, F/M, post-episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-05-03
Updated: 1999-05-03
Packaged: 2017-10-12 21:30:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/129285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flywoman/pseuds/Flywoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set around the time of "A Christmas Carol"/"Emily." A sort of companion piece to "Silent Night," from Mulder's POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleep

You used to sprawl regally across the mattress, your tiny frame  
miraculously expanded in sleep. Perhaps the only forces holding you to  
that compact shape in daylight were the sheer energy and force of will  
knitting your bones and coiling your joints in perpetual readiness to  
spring. Unconscious, you loosened and unravelled, half-tangled in the  
sweat-soaked sheets, limp fingers dangling off either side of the bed.  
And my bemused six feet of hard-edged torso and gangly limb made room for  
you, content with the narrow space between the floor and your heart.

Now you keep mercilessly to your own side, to your own corner in fact,  
with all the spirit gone out of your sparring. Somehow you have become  
impossibly small, curled protectively around yourself as if a touch would  
shatter you. Scully, your back is leaded glass; it shields you even as it  
mocks me with a damning reflection of my own cowardice. "Why didn't you  
tell me?" I close my eyes against the image of molten green whose secret  
endurance gnaws the lining of my stomach like a canker. There was never a  
time to tell you. I did not dare disturb the universe again when a new  
star had collapsed in on itself so unexpectedly and nearly sucked you into  
oblivion along with it.

These are my thoughts as I lie with you, sinking into your fluffy down  
comforter, its luxurious folds belying the stark ridge of your spine.  
I try to enfold your rigidity, to soften those wax-pale arms into  
something more malleable, but it is a useless gesture. Worse than  
useless, since what warmth I have to offer seeps into your cold  
marble and disappears without a trace, leaving me chilled to my marrow and  
you untouched, unyielding. My inviolate obdurate darling, your elbow  
sharp as an icicle in my ribs and your feet like frostbite.

Strands of your tarnished hair catch on my nails as I stroke your hollow  
cheek, then snap and curl violently away when I try to disentangle them.  
You don't actually flinch, but I can see the faint tightening between your  
eyes. Encouraged by this reaction, however slight, I slide my hand down  
to your breast, which sags cool and inert beneath my questing fingertips.  
My cock twitches despite your deadness. Intellectually I'm aware that  
this is sick, that this is not the way to reach you, but words have failed  
us and I am reduced to this - this perverse groping for some tenuous  
connection via your unresponsive flesh.

I stroke your inner thighs, cool and slippery as afternoon ice cream, and  
then reach up to pull your clammy hands to my flushed face. Your slender  
fingers curl like claws, their nails bitten and torn, their knuckles raw.  
The salt at your wrists tastes of iron on silk. Your mouth has gone  
bitter and powdery as ash. You do not fight me, even when I press into  
those cracked lips so insistently that they begin to bleed. The harsh  
metallic undertone tingles on my tongue as I thrust into you, each labored  
breath a silent scream for your awakening.

Your eyes open, but they are so blank and blue, so devoid of either  
passion or recrimination, that I fall into them as if plunging into icy  
water, and am instantly lost in a boundless sea. My call to you is  
as despairing and meaningless as the cry of a gull, and lost as  
easily in the shout of spray and crash of foam. I am pulled up and  
down, in and out, in a sickening rhythm that threatens to sunder my  
last feeble grasp on identity and purpose. Your name is my only link  
to coherence and order, Scully, my Scully, and abruptly between  
one gasp and the next I feel myself lifted to a dizzying height and then  
smashed against the rocky shore, my arms empty and my eyes stinging with  
salt and sand. For a moment I can only lie there, panting, half-draped  
over you, the dull roar of the waves still in my ear. Then the acridity  
of recollection floods back and I drag myself unsteadily upright,  
realizing just how utterly I have failed you.

There isn't a flaw in that cool porcelain face, but twin trickles of  
moisture meander serenely down from eyes like the sea after a storm.  
I bend to touch swollen lips to your wet cheek, my gorge already rising in  
violent self-disgust. But all I can do is to murmur an inadequate apology  
to those clouded azure eyes and stumble from the room, a sticky hand  
clamped over my mouth. I plunge down in front of your toilet hard enough  
to bruise my knees and clutch its cold sides for comfort as the guilt I've  
swallowed rushes back up, flooding my throat with bile. It takes forever  
for my resentful stomach to empty itself, until I am left slumping weakly  
against the bathtub, my face dripping with mingled tears, perspiration,  
and sour saliva.

But not everything has emerged from my corroded depths into the  
unforgiving glare of the fluorescent lights. My secret is still there,  
worming its way through my gut like a red-hot poker. If anything, my  
spasms have driven it deeper as it seeks a peaceful pocket to curl and  
brood. Now it dozes, tucked securely away in my tender flesh; now you  
sigh in your sleep, oblivious to my unsuccessful purge in the next room.

**Author's Note:**

> Your love is better than ice cream  
> Better than anything else that I've tried  
> -Sarah McLachlan
> 
> Completed 5/3/99.
> 
> Feedback is better than chocolate!


End file.
